


For the Whole World is Out of Control

by still_lycoris



Category: Death Note
Genre: Angst, Gen, Humor, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-20
Updated: 2008-06-20
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ide is more than a little baffled by Matsuda's obsession with the Sims ... it just doesn't seem to make sense when there's so much going on around them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Whole World is Out of Control

Ide discovered Matsuda’s weird obsession with the Sims a few days after he rejoined the taskforce. It seemed quite a normal day with everyone working and then in a moment of silence, Matsuda suddenly looked up and brightly said “Oh, Raito, Misa’s pregnant again!”

Ide had been half-way through a swallow of coffee and he spat it back into the mug, completely bewildered. The others were all rolling their eyes and Aizawa said “Give it a _rest_ , Matsuda!”

“I thought Raito might want to know … ” Matsuda said, sounding hurt.

“Didn’t she only just give birth to Allyanneko?” Raito said, sounding almost amused.

“Yep!” Matsuda said happily. “But you and she just can’t keep your hands off each other … ”

“What the _hell?_ ” Ide demanded, looking around at everyone, almost desperate for an explanation.

“Matsuda’s talking about his Sims,” Aizawa said witheringly.

“Sims?” Ide said blankly.

“You don’t know the _Sims?_ ” Matsuda spluttered. “How can you not know the Sims? What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have a life?”

“Some might say,” Aizawa muttered. “That having a life is why he doesn’t know what the Sims are.”

Matsuda ignored this completely. He grinned at Ide and shook his head gently, almost reproving. 

“You shall come to my flat tonight,” he said firmly. “And you shall learn.”

Ide couldn’t be bothered arguing. And he was genuinely curious about what these Sims were. Now that he thought about it, he did vaguely remember … some ridiculously complicated computer game, wasn’t it? With no real goal or something like that. Dollhouses … why was Matsuda playing with something like that?

Matsuda did indeed take him to his house after the days work was done. He instantly turned his laptop on and sat by it, bouncing excitedly and then loaded up the Sims as Ide made himself tea (Matsuda had forgotten to offer) and pulled up a chair, looking at the little people and the jaunty music.

“The Sims 2 is the best thing in the whole world!” Matsuda bubbled. “You can make your own people and your own neighbourhoods. I’ve made us all a neighbourhood. I haven’t made you yet though, cause I was playing with Raito-kun and Misa-Misa cause they’ve only just had Allyanneko and I wanted to bring her up … and now Misa-Misa’s pregnant again … ”

“Allyanneko?” Ide said lamely as Matsuda clicked on a small screen labelled “MY WORLD!” and it began to load up.

“I was looking for names on the Internet,” Matsuda said cheerfully. “Cause I knew that Misa-Misa was going to give birth. I found that one. It’s pretty. Don’t you think?”

Ide thought that Matsuda was crazy. He watched as lots of little houses appeared on the screen and Matsuda began moving the cursor over them, revealing odd little people.

“There, see?” he said. “This is Raito and Misa-Misa’s house and there’s Allyanneko. Isn’t she so cute?”

Ide glared at him. He found it hard enough to show interest in real babies, let alone ridiculous pixels masquerading as babies. Matsuda didn’t seem to mind. He moved the cursor again.

“Here’s Aizawa and his wife and his kids – he’s got four now cause I thought he might want to have a son but they’ve still only had girls… and here’s the Chief and his wife and Sayu-chan … and here’s … ”

His voice trailed off. Ide looked at the screen and saw four figures clustered on the screen. One was tall and thickset and probably meant to be Mogi. One was thinner, dark haired, big eyed and smiling and somehow, Ide could tell it was meant to be Matsuda. And then two other figures, one elderly in a suit and the other younger looking with dark, messy hair.

“I … didn’t know what to do with them,” Matsuda mumbled sadly. “I mean … Sims don’t … and … it doesn’t seem right just to … to delete them … ”

His voice caught and Ide realised that these must be the Sim representations of Watari and the first L. Awkwardly, he reached out and gave Matsuda’s shoulder a sort of pat, hoping very much that Matsuda wouldn’t cry. He had seen Matsuda cry over stupid things while they were working together and everyone joked that if you were taking Matsuda to a crime scene, you ought to bring tissues. And this, he supposed, was more reasonable to cry about than most things.

“Can you just … move them?” he asked tentatively. “Put them somewhere else?”

Matsuda swallowed. His eyes were a little watery but he blinked and then smiled.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s a good idea. Watari and L can move out and … and live somewhere else. Because when you … you care about people, they don’t really go away, do they? I mean, they aren’t … but they aren’t _really_ gone. So they can … they can be happy and L and Raito can continue sleeping together behind Misa-Misa’s back … ”

“Wait,” Ide said. “ _What?_ ”

“I didn’t mean them to!” Matsuda said defensively, clicking on the house. “They just sort of did … Misa-Misa caught them once and she still hates L, although she and Raito are okay now. L is pretty mad at Raito though, cause Raito invited him to the wedding …”

“You,” Ide said. “Are absolutely mad.”

Matsuda blinked at him slowly, then shrugged as though what Ide said didn’t matter and turned back to his computer, clicking rapidly through a few screens until he brought up a close up of a man in a room.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s make you then!”

Ide left the flat two hours later, eyes slightly itchy from staring at the computer screen for too long. They’d made a Sim him and it had taken forever. (“My eyes do _not_ look like that!” “Why do I only have I only got a few nice points?” “What’s that you’re typing about me being unlucky in love?”) Then they’d moved him into “Taskforce Central” and ‘Ide’ had promptly got into a fight with ‘Mogi.’

“It’s not my fault,” Matsuda said defensively. “I had to give Mogi loads of body points to suit his physique. You shouldn’t have annoyed him, you don’t have any body points yet!”

At this point, Ide had informed Matsuda that he was going home and left Matsuda to it. This only went to prove what he’d always known; Matsuda was bonkers. Completely bonkers. And The Sims was clearly a game for bonkers people to play. So really, they fitted together nicely. He shrugged his shoulders and tried to push the memory of Matsuda’s neighbourhood from his mind.

He quickly discovered that this was not so easy to do. Matsuda would often absently mention his Sims in passing when he felt the silence was too great or the world was getting too boring. Sometimes, he’d mention it casually in passing. (“Oh, Raito-kun, Misa-Misa had a baby boy! I wasn’t sure if you’d want him named after you or the Chief, so I called him Ryuzaki in the end. I figured you’d like that.”) Sometimes, he’d simply ask bizarre questions (“Um Chief, hypothetically, if you were accidentally pregnant with an alien baby, what would you want to call it …?”) And sometimes, he’d actively talk about it with great enthusiasm, no matter how much you wanted him to shut up about it. (“Hey, when I was playing with my Sims last night, we all went Downtown and Mogi got bitten by a vampire lady. I cured him though. I mean, if would be a bit hard to hunt Kira if you could only go out at night, wouldn’t it? Still, Mogi looked pretty cool as a vampire. It was awesome. I’m trying to get one of us to be a werewolf but I’ve never really worked out how you do that … maybe I’ll go on-line and ask around, there must be a way and that would be so cool, don’t you think? I don’t know if there are disadvantages to being a werewolf though …”)

Everyone’s else’s reactions to this were mixed. Raito tended to indulge most of it with a lazy smile which Ide found vaguely annoying, though he wasn’t sure why. Deputy Director Yagami tended roll his eyes and occasionally ordered Matsuda to take things more seriously. (although in the case of the alien baby, he gave Matsuda a very long, hard look and enquired exactly how one _accidentally_ got someone pregnant with an alien baby. Matsuda had blushed and mumbled about telescopes) Aizawa always greeted anything identifiable as Matsuda’s Sim-Talk with a short sharp “Shut _up_ , Matsuda!” It was difficult to tell what Mogi thought of it all, though Ide caught his quiet colleague’s mouth twitching in a smile every so often when Matsuda started.

Ide wasn’t sure quite what he made of it all. It was slightly disconcerting to have your colleague turn to you with a beaming smile and say “Hey Ide, you’ve got a crush on Aizawa’s wife! I don’t think I’m going to let you have an affair though, cause that would really upset Aizawa and then every time Mogi invites him round, you’d fight and it would be annoying.” It was also slightly irritating to have your interest in such matters assumed when the reality was you mostly didn’t care.

On the other hand, Ide knew he wasn’t helping his case very much. Some weeks after the first time when Matsuda had looked at him hopefully one evening as work ended and said “Want to come back to mine and play with the Sims?” Ide had surprised himself by saying “Yes.” Matsuda had made a house for him and helped him design a family of his own (“You can’t play with mine. They’re _mine_.”) Ide had called them the Sato family and named them Kazuki, Kana, Shou and Ayaka.

“That is so _boring_ ,” Matsuda grumbled as Ide moved them into the house. “You could have picked some more interesting names at least! Honestly, Ide, you’re terribly pedestrian, you know!”

“Oh shut up,” Ide growled as he tried to work out how much money he needed to spend on buying the milling people beds and fridges.

“Well, you are,” Matsuda said sulkily, heading out of the room to make some tea. “I’m just saying. No wonder you’ve never had a proper romance.”

Ide found the Sims terribly confusing. Other people kept showing up to “welcome him to the neighbourhood” and because he was busy trying to sort everything out, he didn’t pay enough attention. He suddenly realised that Misa was raiding his fridge and that Mogi and Aizawa were watching his TV, while Matsuda annoyed Kazuki. 

“It’s really not _that_ hard,” Matsuda said, giving him a look like he was crazy. “Just … you know, watch them. Check that they’re happy – Kana is wetting herself by the way. That’s cause Aizawa’s taking a shower. Sorry about that. You should really build more than one bathroom … ”

“They don’t _need_ more than one bathroom!” Ide snapped. “How can I make Aizawa go home? And why does Misa keep stealing my crisps?!”

“She’s hungry,” Matsuda said. “Have someone cook something. People like that.”

Ide did. A few minutes later, he watched as Kana burned to death, surrounded by every other Sim in the house waving their hands with speech bubbles containing pictures of fire over their heads.

“Oh dear,” Matsuda said sadly. “Had you saved?”

“Of course I hadn’t bloody saved!” Ide snapped. “I’ve only just started!”

“You need a fire alarm,” Matsuda said helpfully. “And you should have made sure that Kana had some cooking points before cooking.”

“ _How should I have known that?_ ” Ide snarled, beginning to feel like getting Matsuda by the hair and bashing him against the wall.

“Well, it’s obvious … ”

“This,” Ide said firmly, standing up. “Is a _stupid_ game.”

He watched as Matsuda ordered the Sims to put out the still burning fire, then moved Kana’s gravestone out into the garden to allow the children to go and mourn by it.

“Don’t worry!” he said brightly. “I’ll make them a stepmother for Kazuki to fall in love with.”

“I don’t care,” Ide said grumpily.

“Do you want a girlfriend, Ide?”

“No. I’m too busy for that,” Ide said, feeling that the comment had come a little out of the left field.

“No you’re not!” Matsuda said, sounding surprised. “I haven’t had time to concentrate on you, you’re hardly anywhere up the career ladder ye – oh, are you leaving now?”

As he walked home, Ide swore that he would personally beat Matsuda up if Matsuda _ever_ mentioned the Sims _ever_ again.

He didn’t though. He couldn’t understand it but he was somehow rather interested in the ridiculously stupid game. Perhaps it was Matsuda’s enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the inevitable amusement that had to come when Matsuda absently remarked “I made a Kira Sim to make things more interesting, only I made him a bit to charismatic and now he and Raito-kun are sleeping together … sorry about that, Raito-kun.” (Ide had expected Raito to be upset about this but to everyone’s surprise, Raito laughed so hard that the Deputy Director murmured worriedly about how maybe the stress was getting to him) He didn’t really enjoy _playing_ it – no matter how hard he tried, he didn’t seem to be able to get the hang of making them do things and they were all so _stupid_ , endlessly wetting themselves and passing out on the floor instead of going to the toilet or bed like _sensible_ people would – but there was mild entertainment to be had sitting back and watching Matsuda babble on about his world.

Perhaps it was simply the sense of being somewhere that he enjoyed. Being on the Kira Taskforce seemed to destroy any semblance of a social life. The hours were long, unsociable and difficult to explain. Aizawa wanted to spend any time he wasn’t at the office with his children and Ide couldn’t blame him, but it meant that their once far more active friendship was now beginning to suffer. Mogi tended to prefer solitude, the Deputy Director needed to spend time with his own family and Raito had Misa. That left Matsuda, who was only too happy to have Ide come over once in a while and sit on the couch with a glass of wine, watching him control Sims and listening to him narrating their lives, making up dialogue to go in their mouths and generally enjoy himself.

“Why do you enjoy this so much?” he asked one evening, watching as Matsuda happily narrated a date between Raito and Misa.

“Because it’s _fun!_ ” Matsuda said happily, ordering Raito to go and buy Misa a new cell phone. “Don’t you think it’s fun?”

“It’s ridiculous,” Ide said comfortably.

“No it’s not!” Matsuda said happily. “It’s _wonderful_.”

“It’s _not_ wonderful,” Ide said. “It’s silly. They aren’t real.”

“I didn’t say they were,” Matsuda said, looking a little crestfallen. “I mean … I know they aren’t. It’s just … I like them. It’s … they’re … you know.”

Ide didn’t know. That was one of the things that bothered him. He couldn’t understand why Matsuda was so interested and he couldn’t quite think that it was a really good thing. He also couldn’t understand his own interest and that disturbed him too. He shrugged and continued to listen to Matsuda make up romantic dialogue for Raito and Misa and wondered why it was that Matsuda kept playing and why Ide kept listening.

It occurred to him one evening as he headed home after Matsuda had been happily talking about how he thought that Mogi would be much better suited to working as a chef rather than the a politician and that he was going to change Mogi’s job that perhaps it was something to do with control. Matsuda was always the one that everyone viewed as having very little control over anything. Aizawa often commented with annoyance about how little control Matsuda exhibited. He was impulsive, over-emotional. People didn’t take well to him. When he made them all into Sim people, he could make them do whatever he wanted. He was in charge and he could make his world into something he wanted it to be.

Ide tended to try and avoid thoughts like this. It wasn’t that he _objected_ to deep thoughts exactly, it was just that they tended to be unpleasant and usually about things that you couldn’t alter. What was the point of thinking about them if you couldn’t do anything with them? Much better just to get on with what was there. He pushed the thoughts about Matsuda’s possible needs out of his mind and simply focused on the world as it was.

What “was” rapidly became more and more unpleasant. For a long time, they were getting nowhere with the Kira case, then they were getting nowhere good. Matsuda brought his laptop with him when they travelled to America and Ide knew that Matsuda was hiding away in his pixelated world as much as he could. He made a Mafia House containing Mello and an SPK house containing Near. The SPK house contained _only_ Near.

“Well, I don’t know anything about the SPK,” he said defensively when Ide looked at him. “But I do know Near. And he should be in it. Do you think he looks enough like the drawing?”

Ide didn’t bother to answer. He wondered why Matsuda was so desperate to put everything in his stupid fake world when things were so important in the real one. But he didn’t bother to ask. Doubtless Matsuda wouldn’t have an answer anyway.

And Ide was still watching. He came to Matsuda’s hotel room and watched Raito and Mello have a fight that Raito won. He watched Mello and Near have a fight that Mello won. He watched Matsuda get bored of making people have fights and start playing around with his long neglected Watari-and-L house.

“I liked L,” he said absently as the L on the screen read a book. “I don’t think he’d think much of all of this really. I miss him. Still, Raito-kun will see us through okay. We’ll be fine.”

The night after the Deputy Director died, Ide went to Matsuda’s room. He found Matsuda lying on the bed, laptop next to him, watching the Yagami house with dull eyes. Ide looked at the tiny Soichiro Yagami, then down at Matsuda’s miserable face. He didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything. He sat down next to Matsuda for a while and sort of played with his hair until he realised that Matsuda’s breath had deepened and he’d fallen asleep. Ide leaned forward and moved the laptop onto his own lap, clicking out of the Yagami house. It was up to Matsuda to change his little people after all. Not Ide’s business.

On a whim, he went over to the Taskforce HQ and clicked on that. There was the little him, busy studying something in one of the bookcases. He clicked on the little icon that represented him, feeling stupidly envious of the bunch of pixels. How unfair it was that that little Ide didn’t have anything to worry about. His best friend wasn’t seriously wounded in hospital, his boss hadn’t just died before his eyes. He was probably happy. Matsuda liked to keep them all happy. He felt that _everyone_ should be happy. He was always talking about how he fulfilled as many wants as he could on the Sims Want Meters.

Great. Jealous of a _computer game_. Suddenly angry, he closed the game and turned the laptop off, closing the lid with more force than he’d intended. Matsuda stirred slightly and reached out an arm with a murmur. After a moment, Ide accepted it and allowed himself to be embraced. It felt odd but … not entirely unpleasant. He supposed he didn’t mind letting Matsuda have control over something real for a while.

Typically, Matsuda wasn’t at all embarrassed in the morning. He thanked Ide for staying with him though and there was a _slight_ blush but Ide didn’t think it was because of embarrassment. That made him feel odder than ever. Now really wasn’t the time for any of this and so he pushed it out of his mind.

He hardly got any time to spend with Matsuda and Matsuda’s Sim people after that. Everything was moving so fast. Once they started spying on Raito and Takada, it was easier. Matsuda bubbled about how he’d made a Takada Sim and she and Raito were having such an adorable romance, just like the _real_ Takada and Raito and Misa didn’t know yet and really, Raito was being terribly mean cause Misa and he did have four children together but Toji was the youngest and he _was_ about to enter University, so they could probably cope with a break-up …

“Shut _up_ , Matsuda!” Aizawa kept yelling with increasing anger and Ide couldn’t blame him. He knew what Aizawa was going through at the moment. He also knew that Matsuda had no idea. Matsuda was the only one of them who didn’t suspect Raito at all. Ide hadn’t even tried to broach the subject with Matsuda. What would be the point?

Perhaps he should have done. Perhaps if he’d taken Matsuda off alone and talked with him seriously, it would have been less of a shock to Matsuda’s system. Would have been less of a feeling of having the final rug yanked from beneath your feet and leaving you sprawling.

Ide had never seen Matsuda lose control like that before.

He didn’t think he ever wanted to see it again.

He walked Matsuda home afterwards, not sure what to say. He made them both tea which Matsuda didn’t drink and sat watching him uselessly. After a while, Matsuda turned on his laptop and loaded up the Sims. Ide watched silently as Matsuda clicked through the houses, seemingly unable to settle. There was Takada. There was Mello. There was Raito …

“He’s got four kids,” Matsuda said, his voice blank, every word feeling clipped and sharp. “He’s got a sister and an alien half sister and his mother. He’s got nieces and nephews and I think he got Takada pregnant. I don’t remember. I had the sound off so Aizawa wouldn’t know I was playing.”

It should have been funny but Ide didn’t find it even slightly amusing. His stomach squirmed painfully and he mumbled “Matsuda – ” with no real idea what he was going to say next.

“This … ” Matsuda said and he was beginning to shake. “This … this is all a _lie!_ All of it! It’s all _lies!_ ”

He slammed his hands against the laptop keyboard, fumbling with the disk drive, seemingly trying to yank it out with his bare hands. The laptop growled and whined, the screen freezing. Matsuda had finally yanked the drive open and he threw the CD across the room violently before Ide could stop him.

“It’s a _lie!_ he said again and his voice was more of a sob this time. “Everything’s just _lies!_ ”

“No,” Ide said helplessly. “No. Matsuda … ”

“Just lies,” Matsuda said wretchedly and he began to cry silently, turning away from Ide and hunching over. Ide cold-booted the laptop and went to retrieve the CD. It didn’t look too badly damaged. Perhaps it would work again. He put it back in it’s case and put it aside, then looked at Matsuda. Matsuda was still crying silently and Ide couldn’t think for the life of him what to do.

“Matsuda … ” he said. “Matsuda … ”

“All just lies,” Matsuda mumbled.

“No!” Ide grabbed him and forced him to look round. “Not everything! Not all of it!”

Matsuda stared at him bleakly and Ide shook his head.

“Not all of it,” he said more quietly.

He didn’t know what to say after that. He didn’t know what to say or how to make anything mean anything. He sat with Matsuda and continued to hold onto his arm, staring at the blank laptop screen in front of them. Matsuda just sat, his head slumped so Ide couldn’t see if he was crying any more.

“It’s … it’s not lies,” he said again at last. “You … you made it real, didn’t you? On there. That’s not … it doesn’t matter. The real world doesn’t matter. Like you said. You … Sims don’t go anywhere. They’re still … what you made them to be.”

“But it’s not true,” Matsuda said flatly. “All of it. It’s just not true.”

Ide didn’t try again after that. He continued to sit quite still and after a while, he felt Matsuda go limp against him, head resting on Ide’s shoulder. His cheeks were still wet but they weren’t getting wetter. Ide reached up to stroke his hair again, listening as Matsuda’s breathing gradually became more even, more controlled. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled into Ide’s shoulder at last. “’M sorry.”

Ide didn’t know what to say to that, so he just shrugged his shoulders. Matsuda gave a tired sigh and snuggled a little. Ide leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. Right now, he would have given anything for the strange comfort of watching little pixelated people living their little pixelated lives, all bound up in rules. Sims didn’t surprise you. Sims didn’t lie to you. They only were.

Maybe that was why Matsuda had liked the Sims so much all along.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the livejournal community dn_contest.


End file.
